Question 1

How does this hold up against uBlock Origin on the sites I actually read?

Accepted Answer

It trades rules for judgement. uBlock Origin ships megabytes of hand-maintained filters and loses the arms race one selector at a time; this describes each ad-looking element structurally, sends one Choice question per element with six options, and hides when the aggregate ad probability clears a threshold and beats the safe categories by a margin. It also refuses to hide consent banners and a site's own promotions unless you opt in, which uBlock-style lists often do not distinguish. The trade is a per-page model call and a visible lag on first visit.

Question 2

What exactly leaves my browser on an uncached page?

Accepted Answer

For each element that looks like it might be an ad: the page hostname, title and language; the element's tag, class names, ARIA role and label, size, position and page region; the hostnames of links and iframes inside it, never full URLs, plus which heuristics flagged it; and up to 150 characters of visible text. Never sent: form values, cookies, full URLs, or page text outside the candidate element. Pages containing a password field or a payment iframe are not analysed. Your key sits in extension local storage and goes only to api.typesafe.ai, with no telemetry.

Question 3

Can it hide something that is not an ad?

Accepted Answer

The design is defensive on three fronts. Decisions aggregate rather than argmax, so the ad categories are summed before comparison and a 45/40 split between display and sponsored still hides, while hiding also requires beating the safe categories by a margin and the answer being confident. Every error, timeout or budget stop results in nothing being hidden, so the page always works. There is also a hard never-touch list for payment, auth, captcha and embed iframes, and a Not an ad correction that restores an element and pins it as never-hide for that site.

Question 4

Will the thresholds transfer to sites it has never seen?

Accepted Answer

Untested either way, and the README points at where the leverage is. Code owns every threshold and the model only judges, so you can retune per category in the settings page. But because Jev cannot read HTML, the descriptor is the accuracy lever: if recall is missing, improve src/content/describe.ts rather than the thresholds. Pre-paint CSS rules are materialised only after a few consistent hits, and they expire and self-correct, so a bad run on a new site costs one slow page rather than a permanent wrong rule.

Question 5

How do I install and build it?

Accepted Answer

There is no store listing. git clone, cd jev-adblock, npm install, npm run build, then open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, click Load unpacked and pick the dist/ folder. The settings page opens: create a key at console.typesafe.ai/keys, paste it, click Save and test, read the privacy section, and switch on the disclosure. The Status card turns green once a key is saved and the disclosure is accepted. It ships with no credentials and nothing is analysed before both.

Question 6

What are the exact cost figures for daily use?

Accepted Answer

A first visit to a heavy news page sends one request of roughly 10k input tokens, about $0.0004 at $0.042 per million with output free, and cached visits are free because decisions persist per host and structural fingerprint for seven days. At 250 new pages a day that is around 13 cents a month. The default daily budget is 5M tokens, about $0.21, and it is enforced, and the popup shows tokens and dollars for both the current page and lifetime.

Question 7

What is the codebase layout and how is it tested?

Accepted Answer

static/ holds the manifest, popup and settings HTML and CSS plus icons; src/shared/ has types, constants, the sanitizer, fingerprint, Jev client and question builder; src/content/ does candidate discovery, the descriptor, hiding, the snap effect and site-rule injection; src/background/ is the router, classify pipeline, decisions, cache, site rules and usage. No runtime dependencies, icons inlined as Lucide SVGs. npm run e2e loads dist/ into Chromium with api.typesafe.ai mocked, and a unit test fails the build if anything under src/content/ references the key.

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